Australia v England, 4th Test, Melbourne, 26-30 December, 2017

Rated his ability to change the course of a match from the outset. Not just at Benindia, unlike gcspoc who might be the biggest ftb we have seen. Personally I think Cook is the best I have seen Des and Gordy. As a youngster I enjoyed Bill, Stacky and even Colin McDonald and suffered through Boycott and Luckhurst and later Sunil.

Greenidge, irrespective of stats, remains my favourite

although Greenidge had an absolute horror tour here in 1975-76; so bad you wonder if they sent Geoff (a difficult mistake to make) or an embryonic Alvin

JGK wrote:Has anyone mentioned that Cook was on the field for every minute of play for the Test?

Radio commentators alluded to this ad nauseam yesterday.

Great effort really. Nobody could question his powers of concentration. Rain break probably helped slightly. Have seen some after a long innings retreat to the dressing-room for some period of the next innings in the field.

Roy Fredericks, Jayasuriya, Saeed Anwar and Aamer Sohail are also worthy of mention if we're talking 'attractive batting' rather than just accumulation.

Agree re Sehwag; I witnessed his 190 at the MCG, and still wonder how many he might have made that day if he had not holed out from a rank full toss.

Red wrote:

JGK wrote:Has anyone mentioned that Cook was on the field for every minute of play for the Test?

Radio commentators alluded to this ad nauseam yesterday.

Great effort really. Nobody could question his powers of concentration. Rain break probably helped slightly. Have seen some after a long innings retreat to the dressing-room for some period of the next innings in the field.

Up there with this ... though I'm not sure Dizzy found the rain helpful as regards his concentration; you'd have to ask him.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/series/14655/scorecard/238172/bangladesh-vs-australia-2nd-test-australia-tour-of-bangladesh-2005-06/

JGK wrote:

skully wrote:Oof, poor Chef cops one in the goolies at short point.

Meh.  He should have caught it .

He caught it all right.

MCG wicket officially rated as poor:

http://www.cricket.com.au/news/mcg-pitch-rating-icc-poor-melbourne-cricket-australia-ashes-test-stripped-boxing-day-fine-warning/2018-01-02

Damn straight.

There are some dire numbers from the match. The piece rightly says that five days allowed just 24 wickets. If Vince & Malan had the experience to review their erroneous lbw decisions it may have been fewer still. What's worse still is that the majority of those 24 wickets were down to batting errors rather than good bowling.

1081 runs were scored for the loss of those 24 wickets.

Over half of them - 611 - came from just 5 innings (Warner 103 & 86, Smith 76 & 102, and Cook's monster 244).

Those numbers are damning, especially considering that the pitch was so slow that only 254 of those 611 runs came in boundaries (62 fours and a six). It was turgid stuff, and so it was all the more remarkable that the one bowler generally considered a waste of time in Australia could return match figures of 59 - 23 - 107 - 4.